Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Fathers Keep Children Safe

Mark Lunsford, the single father of a nine year-old girl that was kidnapped and raped by a stranger to the family, is on a mission to revenge the death of his daughter. His mission is inspired and much of what he wants from lawmakers– stiffer sentences for pedophiles and better tracking of them after they are released - is the right thing to do. Pedophiles have been shown over and over again to be very hard to reform.He is missing one crucial detail though. In case after case of children gone missing, the police focus first on the parents, usually the father. The same thing happens when a wife or girlfriend goes missing or is found murdered. The husband or boyfriend is the first to fall under suspicion.

In fact, Mark Lunsford went through this, as law enforcement intensely interrogated him and his father (Jessica’s grandfather). They were given polygraph tests and underwent intense scrutiny. The media focused its attention on these two as well. Suspicion of Mark Lunsford and his father was further fueled by the fact that they both had previous arrest records, even though those arrests were not in the least bit related to sex crimes. In fact, the suspicion Jessica’s family was held under carried as far as her grandmother, who was also given a polygraph test.

Is this what should be happening?

Steve Groene might have something to say about that. His ex-wife and mother of his two children, together with her boyfriend, were found murdered. Groene’s two children, a boy and a girl, were missing. Groene was immediately held under suspicion. The news media spent considerable time focusing on this poor man, while he was in the most desperate state of his entire life.

Because of today’s environment of domestic violence hysteria and hype, the focus on Groene was exacerbated by the fact that he apparently had a heated argument with his ex-wife a few days before the murders and kidnapping. It didn’t seem to matter that his ex-wife was a known drug abuser and that Groene was distraught over the environment his children were spending time in.

During a good part of the time that Groene was being closely scrutinized by both the media and law enforcement, previously convicted pedophile Duncan apparently had both of the children. Somewhere along the way, he murdered the boy. He repeatedly raped the girl.

Was it appropriate for suspicion to have been placed in such inordinate weight on Groene, the biological father? Might that have proven to be a distraction? Wasn't there plenty of time to grill Groene after putting every possible resource into pursuing the possibility that a stranger had indeed abducted the children? Groene wasn't going anywhere and, if a stranger had the kids, there would likely be a point when it would be too late to save them.

Then there is the case of John Mason, the Georgia man whose fiancée, Jennifer Wilbanks, freaked out and disappeared, leaving him standing at the alter. While she was on a Grey Hound odyssey across the country, local police and the FBI were giving Mason polygraph tests. Convinced they had another Scott Peterson type case to pump up their ratings, one could sense the collective sigh of disappointment from the media once Wilbanks showed up, bugged eyed as usual.

Was it appropriate to consider John Mason suspect number one from the get go?

Why does this happen? Because fake “experts,” the feminist state and it’s associated government sponsored industries, have spent so much time and energy trying to convince us that fathers are generally a negative force, oppressive, controlling, and prone to abuse.

The focus that law enforcement and the media put on husbands and biological fathers is based on the myth that most abductions, kidnappings, and rapes are committed by the man closest to the victim. They are basically practicing CYA – cover your ass. They’ve been burned and criticized when husbands and fathers actually were the culprits, and have learned they are never criticized if they blame the father/husband first and work out the details later. Even when the father or husband was not involved in foul play, the police and the media are still not blamed. Even when a stranger has a child, and law enforcement does not catch them before it is too late, the police and the media are not blamed for focusing on the father/husband. Even though it is very rare for biological fathers to harm their own children, law enforcement seems to protect their own reputations first and worry about finding missing children second.

Here is a great example of how this myth is perpetuated. At About.com, under the category of incest and abuse, you can find a guy named Douglas Larson posturing as an expert on the topic of child abuse. He promotes the idea that we should be more concerned about parental abuse of children than we are about strangers doing the sort of thing that one did to Jessica Lunsford. Throughout this article, Larson hints that fathers should get primary focus.

For example: Larson say, “70 percent of men who batter their wives, also abuse their children.” Larson leaves out the fact that all non-feminists ideology based research shows that women are as prone as men to domestic violence (for details, just ask Indianapolis Colts Nick Harper). He also fails to point out that most abusive relationships are mutually abusive, with both the female and the male instigating violence. He fails to point out the pervasive problem of abuse within lesbian relationships. And, worse, he fails to point out that the majority of child abusers are in fact women.

This pseudo expert is happy to have you believe that most child murders and rapes are committed by their biological fathers. Dig a little deeper, though, and you will see that Larson has an ideological agenda and nothing in the way of actual credentials that would lead any sensible person to believe he should be listened to at all. His only credential is that he is a “women’s advocate.” Larson apparently figured at that laws like the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) provide funding to anyone willing to attack families and fathers, while promoting victimhood among women.

But, Larson is entirely wrong. In fact, according to all serious scholarship and studies by the Department of Justice, the safest place for a child is in a home with the biological father present.

Does this mean that law enforcement should not consider the possibility that a parent is responsible for a missing child? Does it mean that biological fathers should never be held in suspicion upon evidence that child has been abused, sexually or otherwise?

Absolutely not. But, it does mean that if we really want to keep our children safe, we should get gender feminist ideology out of the conversation. It leads to gross distortions in the behavoir of law enforcement and the media. More importantly, government policy should not be designed to willfully keep fathers in large numbers out of the lives of their children.

And, when a child like Jessica disappears, and the father is right there working with law enforcement, perhaps the presumption should be that a stranger has abducted the child. Any law enforcement resource distracted from the search to find a child possibly abducted by a pedophile stranger is a resource distracted from the most difficult type of search. And, as we see over and over, there is not much time before it is too late.

After all, usually, the biological father is right there working with law enforcement and uncomfortably in front of the media - scared, lonely, desperate, and too often erroneously standing accused. He doesn’t need to be found. The child does.

I applaud Lunsford for taking a stand and working so hard to increase the seriousness with which society takes the terrible scourge of pedophilia. It probably is too much to ask that he dilute any of the anger he has for the horrible murder of his daughter by questioning the fact that law enforcement and the media wasted time and resources putting him under suspicion. But, someone should.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

In January The Sun printed a sensationalistic story implicating F4J in a plot tokidnap the children of the PM.

This story was based on non-existant information.As a result, The Fathers 4 Justice campaign group said it had decided to disband due to the report, although it insisted none of its current members had been involved in any kidnap plot.

Fathers and Gentlemen everywhere,Share your thoughts with and about this smear campaign by the Sun.Beginning January 22 cease purchasing the Sun for a period of three weeks.Consider any issue in public to be a white feather.Promptly place any found abandond in the dust bin as an-anti litter measure.

Please pass this on to at least three other men and women who might be willing to support justice in the family courts of the United Kingdom.

Today on MSNBC, the mandated TV channel in the lunchroom at the "world's largest software company", which must remain unnamed, was a story with talking heads about the abuse of a kid in NYC, by her father and mother.

About the fifth reference, it was clarified that it was the STEPfather.

The woman's lawyer was on, and there was speculation about the "battered woman's defense", although there was not evidence of that.

The speculation then turned to who would rat out who, to try and get a reduced sentence. And who had "sympathy". This Oprah-styled fest was facilitated by a retired judge, yet.

No talk about the poor kid, or finding facts, or truth, just speculation on how the woman would get off and blame the father. Oh, yeah, sorry, STEPfather.

The STEPfather emphasis is very important. The most dangerous person in a child's life is - in general - their mother's boyfriend. Also, I suspect many women are killed by someone they have had sex with but are not married to.

Conclusion: marriage, in general, protects women and children (and - actually - leads to father staying in touch with their children).

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